The landslide in its popular support in Holyrood was a shock rooted less in surprise than in the visceral impact on the culture of Scottish politics of an inexorable major upheaval. The timing of an earthquake cannot be predicted, but we pretty well know that one is on its way. The last on this scale was when the Tories – who used to be the biggest party in Scotland – had their dominance punctured by Labour half a century ago. For most of the period since then Labour ruled, in Westminster parliamentary terms and local government, the urban heartlands. The Liberals and later the Liberal Democrats nurtured the sparsely populated rural and island constituencies.
Devolution and Holyrood started the process which put an end to all that. Far from puncturing the clamour for greater powers for home rule, Holyrood gave it focus and the Scottish National Party a new momentum.
Fast forward to the latest elections and we see a desultory Labour Party, still in thrall to the conceits and habits of defunct New Labour facing a minority SNP administration led by a charismatic Alex Salmond and behaving like the sort of government the majority of Scots over the past two generations or more have made it clear they want – a centre-left, social democratic one which stands up for Scotland.
As Martin Gostwick reports on page 11, the SNP has successfully opposed policies which would damage the social and economic fabric of Scotland (including those implemented by the last Labour Government) and protected public sector services such as education and health. Labour’s misguided rallying call to the voters was based on destabilising the coalition at Westminster, a mistake compounded by the risible claim that a vote for the SNP would be a vote for independence. Not so much power to the people as an export of that political power to the south, a Hibernian shield for a Labour Party in stasis at Westminster.
With a healthy majority in Holyrood, Mr Salmond will proceed with the long-promised referendum on independence which he, like most people in Scotland, expects to be rejected, an event which Labour believes will be his nemesis. But he has now produced a get out clause in the form of a “third way”, adding the option of more fiscal autonomy to the referendum choices. And who could argue with that?
Labour had a long, hard road to climb before the elections in the fight to reclaim its radical principles. Scotland has just made it even harder, but more imperative.
*****
Wholehearted support to Labour MPs campaigning to have a bust of former party leader Michael Foot placed in a suitable location in the House of Commons. The idea was first mooted by the Nye Bevan Society and has now been taken up with the House authorities by the Parliamentary Labour Party. A suitable place might be in the vicinity of his old hero Nye Bevan, whose own bust sits on the main staircase leading to the public committee rooms. Tribune readers wanting to support the campaign should write to their MP and/or the Serjeant-at-Arms.
